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what's in a name
I was probably... late teens? before it occurred to me that surnames frequently suggest ethnic or racial or at least family histories.
Probably at least one reason why this took so long to hit was that I was aware married women took their husbands' surnames, so a married woman's surname didn't say anything about her background. (This says interesting things about my presumption that married couples don't come from similar backgrounds.)
My middle name is my mother's maiden name. For many years I assumed that was totally normal, that of course you would preserve family history by giving a child both parents' surnames. I would have been about seven when I found out that wasn't so (in my culture, in others it is): I was seven when my mother was pregnant with my brother and my parents were arguing about what to name the baby. Funnily, boy name suggestions came with a first and a middle name, but girl name suggestions, we only considered the first name. So I learned that girls carry that secret matrilineal history in our middle names and boys are their father's sons. It felt like something precious, that hidden gift of a middle name.
(Until I figured out, from novels, I think, that sometimes girls have ordinary given names for middle names too. It was baffling and something of a disappointment.)
Probably at least one reason why this took so long to hit was that I was aware married women took their husbands' surnames, so a married woman's surname didn't say anything about her background. (This says interesting things about my presumption that married couples don't come from similar backgrounds.)
My middle name is my mother's maiden name. For many years I assumed that was totally normal, that of course you would preserve family history by giving a child both parents' surnames. I would have been about seven when I found out that wasn't so (in my culture, in others it is): I was seven when my mother was pregnant with my brother and my parents were arguing about what to name the baby. Funnily, boy name suggestions came with a first and a middle name, but girl name suggestions, we only considered the first name. So I learned that girls carry that secret matrilineal history in our middle names and boys are their father's sons. It felt like something precious, that hidden gift of a middle name.
(Until I figured out, from novels, I think, that sometimes girls have ordinary given names for middle names too. It was baffling and something of a disappointment.)
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